sign in sign up
<<
Home , Designer, Design museum, Graphic designer

-Authored Histories: Graphic at the Goldstein of Design Steven McCarthy

This paper is based on a presentation made The idea that graphic could, and would, create their own in 2005 at the New Views: Repositioning histories through their writing, designing, and publishing can be History conference held at the found throughout the twentieth century. Whether documentary, College of Communication. reflective, expressive, critical, self-promotional, comparative, or visionary, designers have harnessed the means of production to 1 For further reading on design authorship: state their views in print—a concept and a practice that parallels Anne Burdick, ed., Emigre 35 and 36: Clamor over Design and Writing (Sacramento, CA: most of the discipline’s growth and maturity. Jan Tschichold’s Emigre, Inc., 1995, 1996). influential New , published in 1928, Eric Gill’s polemical Steven McCarthy, “What is Self-Authored book, An Essay on Typography, from 1931, and Willem Sandberg’s Graphic Design Anyway?” Design as Author: Voices and Visions poster/catalog Experimenta Typografica books, begun in the 1940s, are just a few early (Highland Heights, KY: Department of Art, examples that illustrate how graphic designers and typographers 1996). have advanced their ideas through self-authorship. Cristina de Almeida, “Voices and/or Visions” Design as Author: Voices and Visions On the intellectual heels of deconstruction, semiotics, poster/catalog (Highland Heights, KY: conceptual art, and postmodernism, and enabled by new Department of Art, 1996). technologies for the creation, production, and distribution of Michael Rock, “The Designer as Author” Eye, no. 20 (London: Emap Construct, 1996). designed artifacts, more graphic designers began to produce Rick Poynor, “Designer as Author” self-initiated work in the century’s latter decades. However, it Design Without Boundaries (London: Booth-Clibborn Editions, 1998). was not until the early to mid-1990s that formal theories about Monika Parrinder, “The Myth of Genius” Eye, design authorship emerged. Among the tenets posited by design no. 38 (London: Quantum Publishing, 2000). authorship’s framers were redefining the design process, opening Steven McCarthy, “Tinker Tailor Designer Author” Eye, no. 41 (London: Quantum new avenues for collaboration, building stronger relationships Publishing, 2001). between visual form and literal content, expanding the for Cristina de Almeida and Steven McCarthy, personal expression, creating a greater of social and political “Designer as Author: Diffusion or Differentiation?” DECLARATIONS of engagement, and finding more opportunities for entrepreneurial [inter]dependence and the im[media]cy of ventures. In 1995 and 1996, in particular, Emigre magazine’s issues design international symposium web site. (Montréal, Canada: Concordia University, devoted to “Clamor over Design and Writing,“ the exhibition, 2002) http://www.declarations.ca/ Designer as Author: Voices and Visions, held at Northern Kentucky knowledge/author_1.htm (now offline). University (Fig. 1), and the Eye magazine article, “The Designer as Steven McCarthy and Cristina de Almeida, 1 “Self-authored Graphic Design: a Strategy Author,” fueled the debate. for Integrative Studies” Journal for When one considers the plethora of commercial graphic Aesthetic Education (Champaign-Urbana, design in everyday life, how might a narrowly defined area like IL: University of Illinois Press, 2002) Rick Poynor, No More Rules: Graphic Design design authorship be relevant to the discipline’s study and research? and PostModernism (New Haven, CT: Yale Before trying to answer, some background on the context for a University Press, 2003). collection of designer-authored histories follows. This essay explores Katherine Moline, “Authorship, Entrepreneurialism and Experimental a range of examples of works, held in the Goldstein Museum of Design” Visual:Design:Scholarship, Design at the University of Minnesota, that exemplify key moments Research Journal of the Australian Graphic Design Association, vol. 2, no. 2. http:// in the history of graphic design authorship. In addition, selected adga.com/au/vds/vds020205.pdf (online works will be examined that prompted debates, mainly in the design September 28, 2007) © 2010 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Design Issues: Volume 27, Number 1 Winter 2011 7

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_a_00053 by guest on 29 September 2021 Figure 1 Designer as Author: Voices and Visions poster (detail), 1996.

press, about the role of the in the professional arena, as well as the blurring of boundaries conventionally held firm between fine art and graphic design.

The Museum Context The Goldstein Museum of Design at the University of Minnesota is known for its collections in apparel design, historic costume, textiles, and some . The museum was founded from the collection of sisters Harriet and Vetta Goldstein, professors at the university in the early twentieth century and authors of the 1925 book, Art in Everyday Life.2 Their design philosophy was more Arts and Crafts movement than Bauhaus, but their proto-feminist approach elevated the design possibilities of domestic life at a time when design was largely a man’s world. The Goldstein Museum’s decision to add a graphic design collection came from several convergences, including growth in the number of students enrolled in courses in the field, as well as a robust professional community in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul. The Collection, which was established in 2000, focuses specifically on objects of design authorship, making it one of only a handful of specialist graphic design collections housed in a university museum context. (Similar American collections include the Cary Collection at the Rochester Institute of Technology, the Wolfsonian Collection at Florida International University, and the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography at Cooper Union.) This specialization, in itself, makes it unique in its contribution to documenting—from the mid-twentieth century to contemporary times—an important aspect of graphic . It is important to note, prior to listing the works in the collection, that this is a young and growing collection, an incomplete collection, and a collection that has yet to be fully exploited in terms of research and scholarship. The collection has both macro and micro qualities, as discrete works show particular examples of 2 Harriet Goldstein, Art in Everyday design authorship, while an entire run of a publication or several Life. (New York, The Macmillan publications together reflect how the larger themes of design Company, 1925).

8 Design Issues: Volume 27, Number 1 Winter 2011

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_a_00053 by guest on 29 September 2021 authorship have evolved over time. All works position the graphic designer as subject (by designers) and object (about designers), while the graphic that give their ideas tangible form are as integral to their messages as the literal words. After all, as one scholar asserts more generally, “It would be far more productive if the subject of graphic authorship, superficially debated in/by the profession, were addressed in terms of its specifics—highlighting how specific designs work, at the levels of their graphical, semiotic, and ideological dimensions.”3 The works acquired include the publications PM (later A-D), Portfolio, Push Pin Graphic, Dot Zero, Octavo, Emigre, Fuse, Zed, News of the Whirled, and the complete contents of the exhibitions, “And She Told 2 Friends” and “Soul Design.” Each publication and exhibition is discussed with particular emphasis on its contribution to the concept of graphic designers’ writing and designing of their own histories. Names of major contributors have been cited because doing so expands the connections between design authorship and the designer’s involvement with the broader discipline of graphic design practice, and because it is a legitimate historical approach to credit “exceptional individuals.”4 Each work discussed below signals a shift in the ways we think about graphic design, both in terms of documenting professional practice and in how culture, new technologies, and socio-political issues have informed the history of the discipline. Because ideas about graphic design authorship were emerging in the mid-1990s, and were being debated in Emigre and Zed in particular, the collection acquires an aspect of being self-aware from that point forward. That the earlier publications hadn’t yet been labeled as works of design authorship doesn’t diminish their contributions; rather, they establish a foundation for shaping subsequent discourse. The concept comes full circle as many individual works in Kali Nikitas’ curatorial project, “And She Told 2 Friends,” were created for typical client-designer-user contexts (e.g., Irma Boom’s stamps for the Dutch postal service and Robynne Raye’s concert poster); 3 Gérard Mermoz, “The Designer as therefore, design authorship resides at the level of the exhibit, and Author: Reading the City of Signs— not necessarily at the level of the discrete artifact. The works of the Istanbul: Revealed or Mystified?” Design Issues, vol. 22, no. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Collection have this in common: They all contribute to the historical MIT Press, 2006), 79. narrative, in designers’ voices, of how authorial practice has enlarged 4 Alice Twemlow, “End of History? Graphic the discipline of graphic design. Design hasn’t Started” paraphrasing Rick Poynor from his New Views: Case Studies from the Collection Repositioning Graphic Design lecture, PM, which stood for Production Manager, was first published in 1934 “Reluctant Discipline: Graphic Design History’s Protracted Birth” Eye magazine in New York City and defined itself as an “intimate journal” and a web site. http://www.eyemagazine.com/ “non-profit, cooperative graphic arts magazine.”5 Edited by Robert review.php?id=130andrid=633 (online L. Leslie, PM published articles, reviews, and visual essays and also September 19, 2007) ran . Its topics were primarily typography, printing, paper 5 Robert L. Leslie and Percy Seitlin, eds. stock, art direction, , and , which were aimed “A-D” A-D vol. VI. no. 5 (New York: A-D Publishing Co., 1940), 57. at an audience within the graphic arts trade, as evident in its title.

Design Issues: Volume 27, Number 1 Winter 2011 9

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_a_00053 by guest on 29 September 2021 Figure 2 A-D covers, 1941 and 1940.

However, PM did change its name to A-D (Fig. 2)—Art Direction and/or Advertising Design—in 1940, to reflect the field’s growing professionalism. PM/A-D published industry and professional news six times per year, until 1942. The list of contributors to PM/A-D reads like a who’s who of mid-century American and European émigré graphic designers: Herbert Bayer, Gene Frederico, E. McKnight Kauffer, William Golden, William Dwiggins, Cipe Pineles, Herbert Matter, and others. Editor Leslie is credited with “spreading the ideals of European to a generation of designers and art directors,”6 and doing so with a “missionary zeal.”7 In PM/A-D, one encounters several elements of authorship beyond the typical neutrality of many graphic design trade 6 Erin Malone, (1994) “Dr Leslie and magazines. The June-July 1939 issue advocated a boycott of the Composing Room: 1934–1942, An “Nazi-made type faces” through the publication of a proclamation Important Time in the Development of opposing “international fascism and all the barbarism and American Graphic Design” Dr. Leslie 8 Project (1994–2006) http://www.drleslie. oppression inseparably identified with it….” From the August- com/PMADMagazines/Magazines.shtml September 1940 issue, critic Elizabeth Sacartoff titled her essay (online September 27, 2007) “Artist as Reporter,” bringing to mind terms from the late 1990s like 7 Steven Heller, “The Missing Link: Graphic “designer as producer,”9 “authorpreneur,”10 and “designist,”11 which Design Trade Magazines and the Modern were proposed in the aftermath of the “designer as author” term. Avant Garde” Baseline 40 (Kent, UK: PM/A-D began as a trade magazine, but by showcasing Bradbourne Publishing Ltd., 2003), 43. 8 Robert L. Leslie, “PM Shorts” PM vol. progressive design and speaking out on political issues, it set 5, no. 1 (New York: PM Publishing Co., the stage for subsequent publications. Portfolio was one such 1939), 46. magazine. 9 Ellen Lupton, “The Designer as Producer” Portfolio, art directed by Alexey Brodovitch (during which The Education of a Graphic Designer, ed. time he also art directed the women’s magazine, Harper’s Steven Heller (New York: Allworth Press, 1998), 159-162. Bazaar ), was published only three times between 1950 and 1951 (Fig. 10 Steven Heller, “The Attack of the 3). Frank Zachary was its editor and is credited with corralling the Designer Authorpreneur” AIGA Journal magazine’s writers, artists, and photographers. Primarily visual, of Graphic Design, 16 (2) (New York: and formally experimental with elaborate production values, American Institute of Graphic Arts, 1998), Portfolio featured portfolios of design, illustration, photography, 35. and calligraphy from established and emerging artists. Some 11 Denise Gonzales Crisp, “Out of Context: Designists Slash Entrepreneurs and Other articles covered historical topics, such as Napoleon’s patronage of Slash Utopians” Emigre 43 (Sacramento, typographer Giambattista Bodoni, while others portrayed the work CA: Emigre, Inc., 1997), 51. of contemporary artists and designers, such as Alexander Calder,

10 Design Issues: Volume 27, Number 1 Winter 2011

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_a_00053 by guest on 29 September 2021 Figure 3 (above left) Jackson Pollock, Charles and Ray Eames, Richard Avedon, Paul Portfolio interior spread, 1950. Rand, and Ben Shahn. Portfolio’s engagement with design authorship was through Figure 4 (above right) Push Pin Graphic interior spread, 1977. the process of commissioning, inviting, editing, and then exposing the content to Brodovitch’s dramatic sense of space and structure. Its filmic pages provided an inventive format for others’ works to interact with a master in a purely aesthetic context. “They demanded nothing from the reader but admiration.”12 Portfolio has become coveted as a collectable design artifact. As a work of design authorship, it exudes a celebratory quality: Virtuosity meets optimism, a form of design for design’s sake. That it was published just three times signals its ideological success at the expense of commercial failure, as Portfolio did not accept advertising. Taking the opposite approach, Push Pin Graphic did accept advertising and ran for 23 years (Fig. 4). Published 86 times by Push Pin Studios (Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast, and Edward Sorel) from 1957 to 1980, the bi-monthly Push Pin Graphic influenced a generation of American graphic designers through its humor and wit. Ostensibly published to promote the illustration, design, and photography of Push Pin Studios, the brochure-sized publication took on its own cultural life over time. Seymour Chwast was the editor and art director for many of the early years, eventually swapping the editor title for publisher. Paula Scher served as contributing editor for many issues and Ken Robbins edited a number of later issues. Moving beyond its own promotional aspirations, Push Pin Graphic eventually began showcasing other artists, designers, and photographers. Colorful and idiosyncratic in an era of type and stripe Swiss modernity, the accessible Push Pin Graphic was a flag-bearer for pop culture. Recognizing Push Pin ’ popularity in the New York-centric graphic design community, ads by printers, service bureaus, and type houses regularly appeared in the publication.

12 Richard Hollis, Graphic Design: a Concise Theme-oriented issues during the 1970s—Mothers, Your History (London: Thames and Hudson, Body and You, New York at Night—were vaguely topical, but 1994), 117. the era’s contentious debates about feminism, sexual politics,

Design Issues: Volume 27, Number 1 Winter 2011 11

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_a_00053 by guest on 29 September 2021 Figure 5 (above left) Dot Zero 4 & 5 covers, 1967 and 1968. and marginalized subcultures were primarily referenced for their laughs. Later issues ventured further from typical graphic design Figure 6 (above right) concerns, with literary reprints such as “The Lottery in Babylon” Dot Zero 5 interior spread, 1968. by Jorge Luis Borges and “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allen Poe, which lent themselves as backdrops for Push Pin Studios . Blending the promotional with the personal is possibly Push Pin Graphic’s main contribution to the idea of designer-authored histories. A newly published monograph, Push Pin Graphic: A Quarter Century of Innovative Design and Illustration, by Seymour Chwast, and a Spring 2005 exhibition of Push Pin Graphic at the American Institute of Graphic Arts gallery in New York attest to the magazine’s continuing popularity. “A precursor to the self-published design zines and promotions that followed its lead, its historical significance is undeniable.”13 Appearing almost anecdotal to Push Pin Graphics, Dot Zero was a quarterly publication out of New York City that was produced from April 1966 to Fall 1968 and that lasted only five issues (Fig. 5). Published by Ralph Eckerstrom, and designed by Massimo Vignelli (the two were co-founders of the design consultancy Unimark International), Dot Zero was interdisciplinary, modernist, intellectual, and analytical. Austere in its black and white reproduction, Dot Zero’s graphic vocabulary implied a high-browed seriousness and objectivity. In Dot Zero 1, editor Robert Malone promised that the publication “…will deal with the theory and practice of from varied points of reference, breaking down constantly what used to be thought of as barriers, and are now seen to be points of contact.”14 Making good on its claim, its pages were stages for the ideas of media theorist Marshall McLuhan, designer-

13 The Push Pin Graphic, AIGA New York artist Bruno Munari, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, design web site Events page. http://www. strategist Jay Doblin, and author Umberto Eco, among others. aigany.org/events/details/?event=EPPG In an introductory statement in Dot Zero 1, Herbert Bayer (online October 7, 2005). wrote, “Dot Zero… plans to assume an unattached attitude by 14 Robert Malone, Editorial, Dot Zero 1 starting from naught and freeing itself from the impediments of (New York: Dot Zero/Finch Pruyn, 1967).

12 Design Issues: Volume 27, Number 1 Winter 2011

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_a_00053 by guest on 29 September 2021 Figure 7 (above left) 15 Octavo covers, 1986 and 1987. taking sides.” Perhaps Dot Zero’s strict grids and uniform sans serif typography were intended to support this philosophy, while relying Figure 8 (above right) on the literal content of articles to express opinions and stake out Octavo interior spread (detail), 1990. intellectual territory (Fig. 6). However, the graphic designer’s role as neutral participant in the process of shaping meaning through visual form has since been thoroughly contested. In Dot Zero, design- authorship is evident less from what is said, and more from how it was said through its selection of typeface: Helvetica. Octavo: International journal of typography elevated Dot Zero’s modernism to high modernism (Figs. 7 & 8). Octavo was published eight times by the British graphic design firm 8v0, Eight Five Zero, beginning in 1986 and ending in 1992. 8v0 partners Simon Johnston, Mark Holt, Michael Burke, and Hamish Muir edited and designed the journal, which featured written essays and displays of visual materials. The editors stated: “…we take an international, modernist stance.”16 A philosophy of typographic excellence, high quality production values, and a modernist typographic orthodoxy—small sans serif type, asymmetrical layouts, rectilinear grids, left justification—were the journal’s signature. To quote one observer, “Octavo had object quality; it informed and acted as a didactic model in itself.”17 15 Herbert Bayer, “Finding Dot Zero” Dot Some issues explored a broad range of typographic topics, Zero 1 (New York: Dot Zero/Finch Pruyn, such as signs and information, and the history of lowercase 1967). letterforms. Octavo 87.4, however, is completely devoted to Wolfgang 16 Simon Johnston, Mark Holt, Micheal Burke and Hamish Muir, eds. Editorial, Weingart’s 1972 lecture, “How Can One Make Swiss Typography?” Octavo 86.1 (London: Eight Five Zero, This choice seems appropriate within the context of design- 1986). authorship, as Weingart’s signature methodology extended beyond 17 London College of Communication his own graphic works to the legions of designers he taught and (formerly the London College of influenced. Printing) student review of Hamish The final issue of Octavo in 1992, a CD-ROM, challenged: Muir lecture from 2003 (no credit given) 18 hub.lclinst.ac.uk/archive/gmd2003/ “Multi-media or multi-mediocrity and the baggage of the past?” views/pdfs/8vo_1985-2001.pdf (online The accompanying poster featured the pixelated type common to September 27, 2007). digital devices, perhaps as an acknowledgement to typography’s 18 Simon Johnston, Mark Holt, Micheal shifting territory. Ironically, this shift was forecast by digital imaging Burke and Hamish Muir, eds. Octavo pioneer April Greiman’s poster and essay from Octavo 86.1. 92.8, (London: Eight Five Zero, 1992).

Design Issues: Volume 27, Number 1 Winter 2011 13

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_a_00053 by guest on 29 September 2021 Figure 9 (above left) As the primary influence that shifted typography’s territory, Emigre 15 interior spread, 1990. Emigre magazine needs little introduction to the discipline’s practitioners and scholars of the past two decades (Fig. 9). An Figure 10 (above right) avant-garde publication that ushered in the era of digital design Emigre covers, 1988 and 1989. and typography, Emigre has been a forum for experimental designer- authored work from its first issue. Evolving over time from an eclectic and personal publication in the mid-1980s to one that defined the discipline’s major debates about typographic legibility, deconstruction theory, semiotics and linguistics, , and contemporary practice, Emigre influenced a generation of graphic designers. Editor and designer Rudy Vanderlans and typographer Zuzanna Licko were both designer-authors in the narrow sense, while the magazine and typefaces they created enabled their peers to have a voice in articulating a new vision for the field. In Emigre 11 (Fig. 10), devoted to graphic designers using the Apple Macintosh computer, a fundamental aspect of technology’s influence on design- authorship is stated in the editorial: “Text, image, and layout all exist as manifestations of the same medium and the capability of simultaneously editing text and composing the layout will influence both design and writing styles.”19 Designing and using original Postscript type fonts was another opportunity for designers’ messages to take on added meaning and personality. In this regard, Emigre was a pioneering digital type foundry, releasing numerous faces by the prolific typographer Zuzanna Licko, as well as by many others, including Jonathan Barnbrook, Scott Makela, Barry Deck, and Sibylle Hagmann. This creative production allowed new messages to be given new forms—an early modernist credo now recontextualized, reconfigured, and remixed. 19 Rudy Vanderlans, “Ambition/Fear” In Emigre 35 and 36, the “Mouthpiece, Clamor over Writing Emigre 11, (Berkeley, CA: Emigre Design” issues, guest editor Anne Burdick expressed her interest Graphics, 1989). “in the operations and uses of the material word—voice, presence, 20 Anne Burdick, “Introduction/Inscription” authorship, ownership, agency….”20 Rudy Vanderlans’ editorial Emigre 36, (Sacramento, CA: Emigre, Inc., from Emigre 39 seems to cement the importance of the designer as 1995).

14 Design Issues: Volume 27, Number 1 Winter 2011

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_a_00053 by guest on 29 September 2021 Figure 11 FUSE contents and packaging, 1991.

author concept: “The only significant contribution introduced to graphic design in the last 10 years or so … might have less to do with anything visual than with how design is produced and who it is produced by.”21 Emigre has been central to the idea of graphic designers writing and designing their own histories through its provocatively inseparable form and content. The Goldstein acquired the complete set of issues 1 through 56 in 2001, when only five sets were put up for sale. Later copies of Emigre were acquired as they were published. FUSE was first released in 1991 as an experiment in interactive digital typography (Fig. 11). Whereas Emigre served to present and market its own typographic offerings through expressively functional use, FUSE pushed its type into the realm of pure aesthetics. Published by FontShop International, edited by Jon Wozencroft, and designed by Neville Brody, FUSE featured type designs by leading British and international typographers. Each issue consisted of a 3.5-inch floppy disk with digital fonts, four A2-sized posters showing the creative potential of the type designs, and an additional A2 sheet with an essay. Occupying the territory between form and function, legibility and expression, and art and communication, FUSE investigated the borders of typographic expression and “[provided] a framework for a new way of looking at language….”22 Contributors of essays and type designs included Matthew Carter, Peter Saville, Bruce Mau, Phil Baines, Malcolm Garret, Tibor Kalman, Rick Valicenti, and WD+RU (Women’s Design + Research Unit), among others, within the 18 issues of FUSE. Summing up FUSE’s innovative approach to letterform design and its contentious role in rendering language visible, Paul Elliman 21 Rudy Vanderlans, “Graphic Design wrote in a FUSE essay: “The problem remains that typography not and the Next Big Thing” Emigre 39 23 (Sacramento, Emigre, Inc., 1996), 7. only supports the artificial structuring of language, it exists for it.” 22 Jon Wozencroft, ed. Editorial, FUSE 1 While many of the typefaces released by FUSE were examples of (: FSI GbmH, 1991). typographic innovation, they functioned less as useable alphabets 23 Paul Elliman, “Reading Typography and more as polemical statements on the nature of visual language. Writing Language” FUSE 10 (Berlin: FSI Its typographers’ marks were designer-authored signatures, personal GbmH, 1994).

Design Issues: Volume 27, Number 1 Winter 2011 15

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_a_00053 by guest on 29 September 2021 Figure 12 (above left) and abstract, and yet perhaps existing as the runes, cuneiforms, Zed interior spread, 2000. and hieroglyphics to the anthropologists and archaeologists of the future. Figure 13 (above right) News of the Whirled covers, 1997 through Zed: a Journal of Design that bridged the gap between 2004. education and design practice, was published seven times from 1994 to 2000 by the Center for at Virginia Commonwealth University (Fig. 12). Edited by Katie Salen, as well as various guest editors, Zed structured its content around themes such as Politics of Design, Design and Morality, and Public + Private in its quest “to identify and embrace the margins; to question, debate, and question again; to weigh the alternatives and consider the possibilities.”24 In this regard it was intellectually wide-reaching, with written and visual essays by, among others, Tom Ockerse, Gunnar Swanson, Teal Triggs, Russell Bestley, and Diane Gromala. Topics ranged from technology to gender issues to semiotics, with graphic design as the connective tissue, both in content and in form. A paperback book-sized journal, Zed’s covers often featured soft-focus photographic imagery printed in a single color. Interior spreads emphasized text that was highly readable while using contemporary type treatments and angular shaped text columns. One illustration by Jonathan Barnbrook used what appeared to be mono-width typewriter type in rendering the tonal likeness of England’s Queen Elizabeth. The page opposite, also set in typed characters that created larger letterforms, declared: “The most successful parasites always make the body they are destroying feel that it needs them for its continued survival.”25 A possible interpretation in this context is the role of the avant garde—including design authorship—to mainstream graphic design practice. Unlike many publications, Zed held an open call for 24 Katie Salen, ed. “Editor’s Note” Zed submissions so that opportunities for publication were based on 1 (Richmond, VA: Center for Design merit, which gave emerging designers and academics a new voice. Studies, 1994), 7. Because it purported to bridge the gap between design practice 25 Jonathan Barnbrook, Zed 7, Katie Salen, and education, having an element of peer-review was crucial to ed., Teal Triggs and Siân Cook, guest editors (Richmond, VA: Center for Design establishing the journal’s academic credibility. Studies, 2000), 131.

16 Design Issues: Volume 27, Number 1 Winter 2011

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_a_00053 by guest on 29 September 2021 Figure 14 And She Told 2 Friends, 1996. (This particular design, titled “Pink” is by Sheila Levrant de Bretteville)

However, academic credibility isn’t always the goal, even when a graphic design professor publishes—as News of the Whirled demonstrates (Fig. 13). News of the Whirled has been the unconventional publishing venture of Kenneth FitzGerald and his creative project, Ephemeral States. Produced initially in 1997 (the first issue was featured in its entirety within Emigre 41), four issues of the publication have been printed, each in a single monochromatic color: blue, brown, green, and purple. Referred to by one detractor as “an aesthetic and self-referential object,”26 News of the Whirled featured fiction, non-fiction, poetry, photography, visual compositions, and found content by FitzGerald and other contributors. News of the Whirled did not distinguish between art, literature, and design as disciplines or as creative processes. Its vocabulary of complex forms, densely overlapping image-text compositions, and challenging typography seem appropriate for the publication’s eclectic nature, its obscure references, and its multiple meanings 26 Reviewer 2, “Correspondence” News of the Whirled 3, Kenneth FitzGerald, ed. and interpretations. FitzGerald preferred to use “arranged and (Duluth, MN: Ephemeral States, 2001), produced”27 rather than edited and designed to describe his role 23. in the magazine’s production, a Gesamtwerk of design-authorship. 27 Kenneth FitzGerald, ed., News of the FitzGerald described his work on News of the Whirled in this way: Whirled 3, (Duluth, MN: Ephemeral “It’s the result of intricate plotting, improvisation, procrastination, States, 2001) inside front cover. 28 Kenneth FitzGerald, essay in Form\Inform: time, and budget pressures. I still sabotage my desire for refinement 28 Catalog of Works, Steven McCarthy, ed., with accident, and vice versa.” (St. Paul, MN: The Goldstein Museum of While much of the Goldstein’s graphic design collection Design, 2003). consists of publications, the Museum acquired the contents 29 Steven McCarthy, “Curating of two exhibitions because “…acting as meta-authors, some as Meta Design-authorship” curators produce design-authorship at the level of the conceptual Visual:Design:Scholarship, Research 29 Journal of the Australian Graphic Design exhibition.” In 1996, design educator Kali Nikitas curated the Association, vol. 2, no. 2. http://www. exhibition, “And She Told 2 Friends,” an “exhibit [that] curated adga.com.au/vds/vds020205.pdf (online itself”30 through an invitational network of women graphic designers September 28, 2007). (Fig. 14). Referring to the manner in which stories spread among a 30 Kali Nikitas, ed. “And She Told 2 Friends: group of friends through sharing, “And She Told 2 Friends” was an An International Exhibit of Graphic Design By Women” And She Told 2 innovative work of design-authorship on a larger scale. Although Friends (Chicago: Michael Mendelson many of the works exhibited were for clients’ traditional needs Books, 1996), 23. and not created intentionally as self-authored, the body of work

Design Issues: Volume 27, Number 1 Winter 2011 17

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_a_00053 by guest on 29 September 2021 Figure 15 Soul Design cover and posters (details), 1999.

chosen through curating, collaborating, and editing demonstrates the core concept behind designer-authored histories. Appropriately, the exhibition was originally shown at Chicago’s Women Made Gallery. “And She Told 2 Friends’” participants are a roster of influential women graphic design practitioners and educators from the 1980s onward: Katherine McCoy, Lorraine Wild, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Irma Boom, Ellen Lupton, Lucille Tenazas, Marlene McCarty, Women’s Design + Research Unit, and others. The exhibit’s accompanying catalog documents the designs in the show with images and descriptive captions and features paragraph-length biographies; and—perhaps most telling—each friend wrote brief statements justifying their two chosen friends. Anne Burdick’s blurb about inviting the WD+RU lauds the collective because “they refuse to keep quiet,” especially on issues of gender equity, and ends with “Right on, sisters.”31 In 1999, Kali Nikitas curated “Soul Design,” a project involving an exhibition and a publication (Fig. 15). The premise of “Soul Design” was to have 18 invited designers each create compositions about someone meaningful in her or his life, which were then printed as tabloid-sized sheets and distributed freely at the exhibition, as well as published in a catalog. Personal, emotional, and expressive best describe the spirit of the pieces, with explanatory texts appearing opposite the graphically designed homages in the catalog. Nikitas framed the topic of “Soul Design,” while the individual designers were bound only by the page size and the limitation of a single color of ink. Design-authorship, in this regard, functions as personal narrative, as art, even as therapy. Michael Worthington chose fellow designer Ed Fella; Nancy Skolos chose her grandfather; Jan Jancourt chose past, present, and future musicians; Alexei Tylevich, his girlfriend. Clearly, the designs say as much, or

31 Anne Burdick, And She Told 2 Friends, more, about the graphic designers as they do about the objects of Kali Nikitas, ed. (Chicago: Michael their admiration. Mendelson Books, 1996), 27.

18 Design Issues: Volume 27, Number 1 Winter 2011

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_a_00053 by guest on 29 September 2021 In her catalog introduction, Nikitas champions the “Soul Design” participants who “…use their skills to communicate something rooted in their own history.”32 Numerous viewers to the galleries, initially in Minneapolis, MN, and two months later in Oslo, Norway, took away snapshots of the designers’ souls as they also took the printed graphic designs. If a design exhibit attendee in Oslo has a free “Soul Design” take-away print in their personal archive, as does a research university’s , is that graphic design history in the making?

Conclusion The Goldstein Museum of Design’s graphic design collection presents a chronology of materials that show a long-standing engagement with the ideas inherent in design authorship. Parts of the collection are largely self-exemplifying, in that the designers were aware of their roles in expanding designers’ voices and staking out greater intellectual territory. Discrete elements in the collection—a magazine spread, a typeface design, an essay—represent design authorship at the micro level, while larger aesthetic, social, cultural, political, and economic themes can be derived from strands at the macro and meta scales. As some elements in the collection extend to within the past decade, one can see how contemporary concerns have a trajectory from design authorship’s tenets. Designism, a term coined by Milton Glaser in 2006 and interpreted as “the intention for social change through design,”33 can be traced directly to a number of designer- authored publications (perhaps even to his own Push Pin Graphic): “ is a current movement consisting of: …designers who are … known for their critical attitude towards mainstream . Although they have distanced themselves from today’s commercial design world, they sometimes use its mechanisms to pose questions about technological, social and ethical questions. Their ambivalent, critical position towards design and the spirited, playful form language used to express this is a constant theme…”34

32 Kali Nikitas, “Introduction” Soul Design, One could easily substitute “graphic design” for “product Rob Dewey, ed. (Minneapolis, MN: design” and arrive at similar ideas, albeit something that occurred Minneapolis College of Art and Design, ten or more years ago. That graphic design authorship—in theory 1999). and practice—has had an influence seems beyond debate. 33 Louise Ma, “Design and -isms at the While studio art has the academic field of art history to ADC” http://www.mediabistro.com/ describe, analyze, criticize, and document it, the disciplines of unbeige/events/design_and_isms_at_ the_adc_44315.asp (online September design history and design criticism are still maturing. Perhaps it 21, 2007) is intellectually desirable to have a body of history and criticism 34 “Nr. 15 Designing Critical Design: Marti that is related to, but not part of, the field being examined. Along Guixé, Jurgen Bey, Fiona Raby & Anthony that vein, new programs in design writing and criticism have been Dunne” http://www.z33.be/index/asp?p recently introduced: one at the London College of Communication age=detailproject%7Csub=67&lang=en (online September 28, 2007) and the other at the School of in New York. The notion

Design Issues: Volume 27, Number 1 Winter 2011 19

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_a_00053 by guest on 29 September 2021 of designer-authored histories would then be a transitional stage in graphic design history’s development, with more academic specialization and increased scrutiny yet to come. Allied disciplines are already adding further and deeper analyses. Assessing the history of graphic design through the lenses of cultural studies, linguistics, anthropology, and other fields is poignant, relevant, and refreshing. The collection of materials amassed to date at the Goldstein Museum might, however, lead to this contrary proposal: that the story of graphic design—its trends and styles, its tools and techniques, its senders and receivers, its producers and consumers, which is to say, its history—is best told by its practitioners. Most of the work in the collection, therefore, occupies a paradoxical position, akin to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which claims—in its loose, popular definition—that the act of observation alters the thing being observed. The questions become: Does the self-awareness central to design authorship affect its history, one of simultaneously doing, being, and telling? How does one reconcile the hybridity of designing (the verb – action, production) with the design (the noun – artifact, system)? The challenge remains then, if designer-authored histories enable symbiotic form and content to help tell the discipline’s story, is there an audience for this story beyond the storytellers?

20 Design Issues: Volume 27, Number 1 Winter 2011

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_a_00053 by guest on 29 September 2021